


Year of the Lion

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Heith Secret Santa 2018, M/M, Modern Setting, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 02:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17215703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: It’s bad enough that Hunk has to work on New Year’s eve, but when the power goes out and he’s snowed in with the cutest guy at his job, it seems that he might have left all of his good luck in the previous year.





	Year of the Lion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [softeststarboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softeststarboy/gifts).



> A special thanks to my wonderful beta, [Mai](http://bluest-paladin.tumblr.com), for not only looking over this story for me, but also for the name suggestion!

The snow outside is falling down in thick bundles, as though the levee high up in the sky has shattered, and the heavens themselves are pouring down to Earth, flooding it with so much endless, heavy white that the new year will start under an impenetrable blanket of it. 

Hunk groans, knowing very well that his car isn’t going to be very happy with him later on. Once his shift ends and he’s forced to trudge through the waist-high fluff, he’ll struggle with the frozen locks and hopefully manage to pry open the doors and procure his scraper where it’s tucked beneath the seats. And once this endeavor is behind him, he can finally begin the daunting task of cleaning off his windows. After everything is said and done, he’s only fifty-percent sure that the engine will even start. His car is touchy on even the best of warm, summer nights. He isn’t sure if a few pounds of snow will be the final kick in the ass that causes its inevitable death, or if he’s overdue for a few New Year’s Eve miracles that he might be able to cash in just tonight.

It’s been relatively slow since Christmas, and Hunk isn’t even sure why they’re open tonight. No one is wasting their time at an alcohol-free coffee shop on New Year's Eve, just as they hadn’t bothered navigating through the blinding snow on Christmas day. Both times, however, dutifully, he’s found himself stuck here, cleaning the cappuccino machine for the fifteenth time today instead of relaxing over a beer with his dad, or some popcorn with his mom and aunts, or a few video games that his young nephews might be willing to introduce him to. He’s here, at this completely dead coffee shop, dressed in his still wet slacks from trudging in through the snow three hours ago, his coffee-stained button-up, and the apron that never feels like it can tie around him just right without either slipping off or chafing just under his arms. 

In the back room, he can hear Keith moving boxes around, and he doesn’t have the will to question what in the world he might be up to back there. Keith, even on the best days, isn’t the most talkative person in the universe, only sparing Hunk a few words now and then, which are apparently leagues more than he’s ever offered anyone else on staff. But he’s frank in a way that Hunk appreciates. He doesn’t sugarcoat his feelings and he’s confident in the things that he can do. He’s a good employee, and a valuable co-worker even if he isn’t great with the social aspect of the job. And Hunk knows that he’d rather be spending tonight miserably with Keith over anyone else. Keith doesn’t complain and Keith’s never raised a stink over being asked to work when any reasonable person would rather be spending their time at home with their families. More often than not, when the bad schedules come out, it’s a race to see who can find Keith the quickest—to ask him to cover for them, instead, since it seems as though he’s never had any social plans in his life.

That thought depresses Hunk in ways that he isn’t altruistic or even awake enough to express right now. It’s not like he has any reason to believe that Keith does or doesn’t have a family that he may or may not get along with. It’s not like he knows more about Keith than a few brief one-word answers about whether or not he had a good weekend, or how he drinks his coffee, or if he’s going to school. Hunk knows Keith has worked at the coffee shop for three years and that he’s a good co-worker. He knows that he likes the summer and that he doesn’t like to talk about the scar on his face. He knows that Keith got fired from his last job because he refused to put a hair-net over the wild, untamed curls that spill over the tops of his shoulders, that he likes it more here when it’s quiet—and it’s quiet often, so he must find this job a lot more rewarding than any of the others that have come before it.

And he knows that Keith never calls off and he never marks his name on the request schedule for any specific days not to work. He never filled out the sheet on the wall with his birthday, either, and he’s never complained that no one has asked about it, or tried to throw him one of their minuscule staff after-hours parties. It’s bridged a very specific gap between “charmingly mysterious” and just a little bit heartbreaking, but Keith isn’t exactly the most personable guy on staff. He actively avoids extended social interaction, and no matter how many times Romelle or even Hunk himself has attempted to invite him to their after-work outings, he’s always quick and brusque in his rejections. Hunk knows that some people just like to keep to themselves, but he can’t shake the idea that perhaps there’s more to all of this that he just isn’t smart enough to piece together. No matter how often Pidge and Lance tease Hunk about his “Keith Curiosity” and no matter how many times the rest of the staff gives him looks as though they suspect that his piqued interest might be coming from anywhere but a place of genuine concern for his peer, Hunk is adamant in his own thoughts that he’s just worried that, perhaps, they haven’t been making the right amount of effort to include Keith and alienated him by accident.

He can’t help but think about these things. He can’t help but _ over _ think to near-obsessive levels. He knows what it feels like to be the unpopular kid, on the outside, looking in. He knows how it feels to be left out no matter how hard he might try to be more interesting or attractive or whatever image of perfection he might have naively thought would make him more alluring to a group of cool kids that he’d chased hopelessly in his regretful middle school years. He knows what it feels like to never be good enough, and he doesn’t want to do that to someone else if he can help it. He’s an adult now, in college. He’s twenty-three and he’s grown so much beyond the scared and shy kid who never quite felt comfortable in his own skin. But he knows that Keith might still have growing to do. He knows that not everyone has been capable of finding themselves, even at this age.

And he also knows that, realistically, Keith shouldn’t feel out of place anywhere. He turns heads frequently, and he’s a customer favorite among a lot of women, just because they enjoy the general aesthetic that he embodies. He’s a handsome, soft-faced person. He has eyes so dark and sharp and intense that even Hunk frequently finds himself pinned in place by them. Keith has a way of making even a simple request for more cream from the back room, or a refill of straws for the drink station sound as though he’s entrusting a person with his life, and a way of carrying out the mundane tasks of this job and making them look graceful and beautiful and even artfully practiced. He’s a well-oiled machine in perfect control of all of his mannerisms and movements. He carries himself in a way so elegant that Hunk is sometimes flabbergasted that he actually exists here on Earth, and not just in Hunk’s romantically-charged imagination. And he’s smart, even if he doesn’t actively try to prove it. Hunk has seen him calculating measurements in his head, and naming off totals quickly and efficiently without the need of the register or a calculator. He’s fast and he’s agile, and he’s every bit as cool and collected as Hunk has long-since given up becoming. 

There isn’t a good reason why someone like Keith would feel ostracized among them, and he understands that. He knows that, realistically, if Keith wanted to be included in their group, he could have taken one of their many eager and heartfelt invitations. He could join in when they’re all joking around. Or he could just talk to them, instead of persistently hanging just at the fringes of the conversation, but reliably, he never seems even the least bit interested in becoming more to any of them than a familiar face that they can rely on to cover their shifts when they need a day off. 

Hunk isn’t sure why worrying about any of this seems so weird to everyone else. He doesn’t know why Lance and Romelle and Pidge seem so perfectly content to allow this to go on without making any attempt to get to the bottom of it. 

Romelle had cited this supposed attentiveness and thoughtfulness when he’d talked to her the other day, when he’d been poking around their groups during their morning tasks, asking at each shift change if anyone had any idea where the mysterious package that appeared in his uniform cubby the day after Christmas had come from. 

It was a small box, wrapped neatly and topped with a curly, golden sparkly bow. The paper had been red with golden accents. It seemed to be decorated with great care. It was neat and free of air bubbles or tears. The paper lay so firm and practiced around the edges that it almost seemed as though it was simply a print on the box.

When he’d found the nerve to unwrap it, after prompting from the small crowd around him had assured him that it wasn’t something of theirs that they’d left in his space on accident, inside, there had been some gold-colored paper wrapped around a single shiny trinket. Upon further inspection, he, and Lance and Pidge craning their necks over his shoulders to take a peek into the box, had discovered that it was a necklace. The chain was thick and long enough that the piece at the end could tuck easily underneath his shirt. The pendant itself was shaped like a lion—a golden and somewhat gaudy embellished piece of jewelry with little red-dyed gemstones in place of the eyes.

Hunk had joked a month or so before that he was the sleeping lion of the coffee shop. He’d told Lance after Lance had prodded him to stop snoozing on the job and clean the mocha machine that he was reserving his energy until it was needed the most. There were numerous coworkers who had witnessed the responding inside jokes, many others who adopted them and forged a place for themselves within that good memory that wouldn’t have made this gift from them out of the ordinary. Among the other people on staff—Lance, Pidge, Romelle, Allura, and Veronica—Keith is perhaps the only person who he can think of who didn’t actively partake in the joke. But the note inside was more personal, and it had taken a great amount of effort to shield it from Lance and Pidge when they tried to snatch it and read it. He’d just felt as though the words were intended for him and him alone, and as though the gifter might been mortified if they learned later on that he’d shared it with anyone else, when this entire situation seemed to have been orchestrated with the highest level of discretion in mind. 

The card had been simple, a small one from a dollar store with a painting of a Christmas tree on the front. The envelope, yellow and matching the paper, had his name scrawled over the surface in handwriting so meticulously jotted down that he had a feeling that whoever wrote it didn’t want to be traced back by their familiar penmanship. 

_ ‘Merry Christmas, Hunk,’   _ the written words on the inside read,  _ ‘Thank you for everything.’ _

It was simple, but something about it felt so profoundly personal. He could imagine a faceless person carefully jotting down the words, practicing on spare scraps of paper as they struggled to make their handwriting as unrecognizable but still as graceful and beautiful as possible. He could see them fretting in his mind’s eye over the perfect phrase to say, because the words felt weighted, even on the card. It felt as though there was more to all of it, as though there was more that they wanted to say, but they just didn’t know how to say it. Because he didn’t know then, nor does he know any better now, what he’d been thanked for.

Romelle had told him that he cares deeply about other people, that he makes them feel at home, comfortable and welcome, and that surely they were thankful for that. Lance had suggested that maybe it was a girl who had the hots for him, but a moment later his panicked eyes had flitted from Pidge, to Romelle, to Allura working around the shop, as though he couldn’t settle completely on which of the girls would be the absolute worst person to find interest in Hunk, which of them he’d be the least horrified to find actually had feelings for someone else. Hunk had laughed then, running a nervous hand through his hair. He’d assured Lance that Allura absolutely didn’t think of him that way, and while carefully written, the card definitely didn’t look like something that the conscientious and detail-oriented Allura would ever be content giving to someone else. He’d also felt that Romelle was wrong for it, as sweet as she could be. She wasn’t a particularly discreet person, and she definitely wasn’t a good liar. And Pidge, one of Hunk’s longest standing friendships, knew him well enough to understand that she didn’t need to make grand gestures to make him understand how much he meant to her, how much they meant to each other. The act of giving him something so thoughtful and anonymous didn’t match the style of any of his co-workers, frankly, which only boggled his mind more. And when Lance had hissed lowly, grasping at his chin and staring in terror down into the empty box at the yellow-colored paper, Hunk couldn’t stop his guffaw of disbelief when Lance suggested that maybe it was Veronica instead. 

“That’s definitely not it,” Hunk had told him, but then he’d realized that he’d run out of people to suspect, “Maybe… it was someone else? Do you think Coran would have done something like that?”

Their boss, Coran, was sure lovable and affectionate enough that Hunk could picture him doing something like that, and he was definitely out of touch enough to think that a pendant so tacky would be something that anyone under fifty who wasn’t some kind of stereotypical Hollywood pimp would actually want to wear. But that had only raised more questions—like why Coran would be so secretive about it, why he wouldn’t get a gift for anyone else. Even now, Hunk isn’t completely certain that this whole thing wasn’t some kind of strange prank gone awry once everyone realized that Hunk had actually appreciated the gift more than they’d originally anticipated. Perhaps Lance himself, despite his constant protests and seemingly sincere assertions that he had absolutely nothing to do with the gift, thought that it might raise Hunk’s morale during the drag of the holiday season if he had a conspiracy to latch onto. 

But Lance isn’t a very good liar, and Pidge, of all people, would have given the game away eventually after Hunk prodded her enough about it that she’d grown tired of the facade. But relentlessly, even as he pestered her dozens of times and she only grew more agitated, she never cracked. Lance never admitted to anything apologetically, and Romelle and everyone else seemed just as stumped as he was. 

He’d thought about asking Keith, too, but something about it had just felt wrong. He’d felt guilty for even considering unloading such a non-issue on Keith as “someone likes me enough that they gave me an anonymous gift unprompted” when he has a sneaking suspicion that Keith might not have gotten anything for Christmas from anyone. He’d kept his questions to himself for the next few days, dutifully staying tight-lipped about everything that he might have thought that Keith would know. Keith spends more time here than anyone, and he’d also closed up late Christmas night, long after he’d allowed Hunk to go home. So maybe, he’d seen someone come in and drop the gift off for him. Perhaps, he might have even promised some customer who’d taken a shine to Hunk that he would put it in his cubby without telling him who the gifter might have been.

But even now, Keith doesn’t seem particularly eager to divulge any important information that might help clear any of this up. He’s slipped through the back room door and into the dining room, carrying a small cardboard box filled with straw refills for the drink station. He barely gives any indication that he knows that Hunk is here as he passes. He simply allows his distant eyes to rove over Hunk’s face for a fraction of a second before shoving the hinged stall door between the counter and the dining room to the side and making a beeline to the drink station. 

Hunk watches him for a long while. He takes in the way that his long hair curls just under his ears, how the split tips of it spill out over his back and settle just between his shoulder blades. He studies how his lithe but firm and carefully crafted muscles under his uniform stretch the fabric over his shoulders, how his pants are just a little too long, too big, rolled up and pinned at the ankles in place of being professionally tailored. He knows that Keith lives alone, has picked up small context clues that all allude to the same thing. He doesn’t go to college, and he pays all of his own bills. Hunk doesn’t know where he came from or why he’d settled on working at this place, of any number of jobs that a knockout like Keith could have easily nabbed instead. He doesn’t know what he does during his days off or even the general direction that he lives in from this store. He doesn’t know if Keith has any friends or family, if he calls home sometimes, or how many contacts might be in the dented, outdated little brick of a cell phone that he’s seen Keith fiddling with a couple of times before he clocks in. But it seems to Hunk that he’s always been alone and he isn’t expecting to change that any time soon. Things might be easier for him if he’d ever considered trusting other people—perhaps taking part in the many after-hours dinners or staff parties, or agreeing to accept a ride home on days like this when it’s so icy and blindingly white outside that taking his motorcycle would be a death wish. 

Hunk knows that Keith will probably be walking home tonight, but he doesn’t know how far his apartment might be from here. He takes the bus often, too, but with the busyness of the holiday, he isn’t sure if Keith will be willing to suffer through the drunken crowds all pressed closed and crammed together in order to stay warm during his trip. 

The offer to drive him is heavy on the tip of Hunk’s tongue, but for the life of him, he can’t find the right moment to ask it. He’d have to be graceful about it, pretend that it wasn’t actually that big of a deal—he’s going in that direction anyway, for something, no matter which direction Keith tells him. It’s not too far out of his way, honestly, it would be stupid not to carpool when Hunk has to head to that end of town anyway. 

It’s a foolproof idea, but he knows that his execution will be lacking. Curiously, he finds himself persistently tongue-tied under the weight of Keith’s blank gaze, when looking into those deep, dark, beautiful eyes. He feels trapped under it like a hooked fish, and Keith, never one to be especially adept in social situations, never seems to realize that he’s the one holding the pole. He looks at Hunk like he’s weird when he stammers, furrows his brows and puffs out his cheeks in annoyance when Hunk can’t manage to get the words out just right.

Hunk knows that Keith thinks that he’s odd, he knows that it’s fair for Keith to think so, too. And he also knows that being a generally strange person and asking Keith if he wants to spend time alone in a dark car together under the guise of driving him home during a holiday so busy that surely no one would notice anything out of the ordinary happening if things went sour, it’s a precarious offer. He knows that, were the tables turned, were Keith consistently off-putting and ill-spoken and awkward and he could barely wrap his mouth around a seemingly out of place offer for a ride home, Hunk isn’t sure if he’d go for it either. He’d be creeped out, that’s for sure, but Hunk also knows that he could call his mom or his dad, his aunts or even Lance or Romelle to come and get him, if only because he might be too afraid to walk alone after a weirdo tried to find time alone with him. But Keith, regardless, won’t depend on anyone. And he knows that even if he tries his best to be as innocent and well-meaning as possible, he might accidentally make things even more strained between the two of them than they already are.

It’s a lot to think about, and Hunk isn’t sure why he cares so much. He knows that he’s known around here, and among his friends and peers at school, to be a considerate, motherly sort of person. He knows that it’s not unnatural for him to feel inclined to offer a helping hand when someone seems to need it. But he doesn’t know why he’s so worried about what Keith thinks of him. In any ordinary situation, with any other person, if they were to reject his offers and act as though he were weird for offering, he’d just shrug and brush it off. He’d move on with his life and decide that people have a right to refuse his help even if that refusal would only result in their own inconvenience or suffering.

But things are different with Keith. Hunk walks on eggshells. He forces himself to keep their interactions limited to small conversation about work-related things, and the weather, and what he did during his weekend without ever taking the time to ask Keith about his own.

And it goes against his very nature to confine himself in such a way, and he doesn’t know why he bothers with it. Keith doesn’t seem to like him more or less than he does anyone else. Keith will probably brush him off brusquely when he offers him a ride home, despite how much time he’s spent agonizing over the best way to ask. But Keith’s fleeting, handsome half-smiles and the charming bend of his lips when he laughs—the way that his nimble fingers brush over the keys on the registers, and how often he takes out the trash so Hunk doesn’t have to bother with putting on his coat—Hunk knows about love language, and he imagines that maybe Keith just speaks his in a way that most people don’t understand. He can’t shake the feeling that they’ve crossed wires many, many times, and that perhaps Keith is just trying to connect to all of them in a way that’s not easy to pick up on at first. But he’s trying, and maybe he doesn’t get why they can’t recognize that he’s trying.

Keith finishes his task while Hunk continues thinking, and when Keith turns, successfully catching Hunk watching the back of his head with surely the most dopey, empty-headed expression on his face, he immediately recoils. His cheeks flush with subtle color, and before he can open his mouth to hurl whatever defensive, embarrassed accusation that he can think of in Hunk’s direction, Hunk cuts him off. 

“Do you need a ride home? The buses are going to be really busy with the New Year party crowd, and… it’s snowing pretty heavy out. It’s probably not safe to walk.”

Keith balks, and Hunk finds himself also positivity perturbed by the words that have just left his mouth so clumsily, especially after all of the time that he’s spent considering far more clever ways to ask. They both sit there silently, dumbstruck for a moment as though neither of them knows what might have possessed Hunk to say such an idiotic thing out of nowhere, but Keith recovers quicker, crinkling the empty box in his tightly-fisted hands and turning his pink-cheeked face instead to the wide, wall-sized windows at the front of the shop.

“I don’t think either of us is going anywhere if the snow doesn’t stop,” he says plainly, flatly, lacking any indication of emotion that his still-flustered expression so traitorously gives away, “I’m surprised that Coran hasn’t called and told us to close yet.”

Hunk follows the trail of his gaze then, peering through the dark windows and catching only the dimmest glow of a lamp across the street through the thick walls of snow. The snow is falling in a way that’s still reminiscent of a veil being dropped over them, neither merry nor bright as the carols might have suggested before Christmas, but instead filling him with a heavy sense of dread.

Just as he opens his mouth to speak, to thankfully find an out in this stiff conversation in the form of calling Coran to beg him to let them close up early for the night and go home before the weather gets any worse, the lights overhead flicker—once, twice, shuddering like strobes just above them before finally petering out. They’re left together in darkness then, barely able to make out the shapes of the booths and tables between them. He can hear a few of the storage containers on top of the drink station jostling as he assumes that Keith is searching for some sort of physical support to cling to in all of the indecipherable blackness. 

“A-are you okay, man?” Hunk asks then, his voice cracking as anxiety writhes within him, “Can you see anything?”

He can hear Keith scoff in the silence, in the absence of the music over the speakers that he often tunes out to nothing but white noise. Without the ever-present sound of the machinery humming around them and the lights buzzing above, Hunk finds that he can almost hear every breath that Keith draws in and out. 

He can’t see him well, but he can imagine the way that his chest expands and recedes, how his pupils might be blown out wide in search of light as he grapples in the dark with blind, clumsy fingers over the straw container that bumps into the box of lids. Hunk can hear him open the door beneath the drink station and shove the cardboard box into the trash can there. He listens and watches the black blob of Keith’s body moving through the shadows as he closes the door and draws slowly nearer. He nicks a chair on his way over, and they both jump at the sound of it scraping against the floor. But very soon he’s pulling open the counter door again and sliding through, still silent as Hunk backs off to give him more space to move. 

It’s narrow enough behind the counter that Hunk fears that they might bump into each other if they aren’t careful. And for some reason, right now that feels like the worst thing that can happen—finding himself touching Keith’s firm chest, or his soft, warm face, or those strong and dutiful arms as they reach out to feel his way around as he continues his ambling effort through the darkness. 

“Do you have a cell phone?” Keith asks finally, finding his way to the back room door and wrapping his fingers around the handle of it, “Mine is dead. You should call Coran and tell him that the power is out, so we’ll go… close up or something.”

He almost says “go home”, Hunk knows, but the view outside is clearer through the windows now that the lights inside are out. The snow at this point has piled so high that it’s midway up the door, and Hunk knows that it would take a very intensive round of shoveling to ever hope of getting to his car. And driving is a whole other story, one that he isn’t especially eager to think about right now. But not thinking about it leads him instead to considering where they’ll sleep and what they’ll do while they’re stuck here.

He knows that Coran keeps a single pillow and blanket in his office for the nights when he stays later and decides to sleep on the couch in there. Their shared dinner could be a couple of pre-packaged sandwiches and cold drinks that he knows Coran wouldn’t mind writing off since they’re trapped. It’s still warm enough moments after the heat has kicked off that he isn’t worried about freezing or conserving body heat, but… there’s still only one couch, one pillow, and one blanket. There’s still considering where the other person will sleep in the event that they don’t decide on the absolutely mortifying option of snuggling close and sharing everything, which makes his face feel molten even as the prospect flits quickly through his thoughts. He’s thankful that Keith has distracted himself with feeling his way into the back room, and that in the further, windowless darkness inside, it’s surely impossible for him to make out the new rise of color on Hunk’s cheeks. 

Hunk follows after him quietly, terrified of accidentally touching something warmer and softer and more organic than the stainless steel prep tables or the rows of shelves around them as he reaches, unseeing, through the thick black after Keith. He can only gauge the distance between them by the sound of Keith moving and breathing, and how warm it feels when he draws just a little bit too close behind him. When Keith stops and Hunk bumps into his back, he reels back and apologizes so loudly that he can almost feel Keith’s confused surprise even though he can’t see it. 

“I—It’s fine. I think… I think your cubby is over here somewhere.”

Hunk almost doesn’t realize what he means at first, until the silence between them becomes so palpable and awkward that he moves solely just to stop from feeling so trapped under it. Only when his fingertips bump against the shelf of his cubby does he remember that Keith asked him to call Coran, and by the sound of Keith’s quiet scoff, he seems to know that the idea of doing so was forgotten only moments after Keith suggested it.

Thankfully, he doesn’t question that. He doesn’t ask why Hunk followed him into the back room if he’d already forgotten why they were going there, because Hunk isn’t sure if he could stop himself from responding, “I’d probably go anywhere if you asked me to.”

And he doesn’t know why that’s even an idea, or a sentence that’s sprung itself into the forefront of his head, but he does understand painfully well that saying something to that effect surely wouldn’t make him look like any less of a serial killer than he already does. Which, call him crazy, but he’d like to avoid altogether. 

He gropes around in the darkness for a moment before he finds his bag. It’s a small and simple satchel-style “purse”—as Lance so rudely titles it just to tease him—that he’s stuffed with anything important that he might need during his shifts. Coran doesn’t exactly have a rule against using phones at work, but every so often, he’ll make a pointedly unhappy and disapproving expression when he catches one of them texting. Lance, on one end of the spectrum, has decided that no clear direction not to use his phone on the clock means that it’s perfectly allowed, but Hunk, on the other end, has taken to hiding his from sight unless he really needs it. It generally removes the temptation to check if anyone has tried to contact him or to skim through various social media sites in search of something more interesting than coffee to focus his attention on, but it’s definitely made things harder on him tonight. It takes him entirely too long to find his phone tucked in the front pocket, and only after he’s accidentally spilled a few pens and pieces of gum onto the floor between himself and Keith. He tells himself that he’ll remember to check when the power comes back on, and prays that his car keys, at least, have stayed buried somewhere deeper inside. He definitely doesn’t want to spend more time here than he needs to, especially if his traitorous keys have decided to fall from his bag and skitter far beneath the desk that houses their cubbies, or one of the many shelves encasing them.

He finally manages to find his phone, and he shoves his bag blindly back into a random cubby, knowing that no one will be in before they manage to figure something out anyway. The light of the screen burns his eyes when he holds it close to his face, and he squints uncomfortably as he finds his contacts and flips through them in search of Coran’s number.

It takes a few rings before Coran’s voice answers, framed by a loud and rapturous cheering and the thumping of music in the background, blaring so loud that Hunk’s forced to hold the phone a few inches away from his ear.

“H-hey, Coran? Can you hear me?”

The connection is spotty at best, and through the lag and the glitchiness and the ever-present noise clashing with Coran’s boisterous and decidedly drunken slurring, it’s hard to make out exactly what he’s trying to say.

“Coran, man, listen, uh… I just wanted to tell you that the power went out and we’re snowed in, so… we’re gonna close down if that’s okay.”

Hunk can barely make out Keith’s face watching him under the blue glow of his phone screen. Keith’s lips twitch as Hunk talks, his brows drawing closer together as though he’s unhappy with how agreeable Hunk has decided to be about this, how apologetic, despite the fact that neither of them should have even been working tonight in the first place. Coran’s words sound affirming enough, but it’s still difficult to discern anything particularly useful among the clashing background sounds. Hunk tells him not to worry, pausing a few times in a futile attempt to hear him clearer, and abruptly, the line dies. Across from him, Keith rolls his eyes. 

His phone is still sitting safely at 89% battery, and it’s already 10:45 PM. They would have closed in an hour anyway, so Hunk feels less guilty about all of this when he resigns himself to spending the rest of his shift doing… whatever people generally do when they’re stuck at work in the dark. 

“Let’s go lock up,” Keith tells him then, jerking his head in the general direction of the door, “Can you light the way?”

Hunk stops himself from making any festive Rudolph jokes on the sole basis that he knows that Keith absolutely would not appreciate them. But he does smile stiffly before he nods, toggling through his phone menu before pressing down on the flashlight button. Light springs out through the darkness, illuminating a backroom that looks familiar, albeit stranger and darker and eerily displaced. It feels uncanny, almost otherworldly, to find himself looking at the many winding rows of shelves in all of this blackness. It reminds him a lot of ghost hunting shows, roving through an unlit home in night vision gear, waiting for the moment that an odd bump in the night might elicit some dramatic, overplayed response. 

Hunk can’t help but shiver at the idea of this shop being haunted, and while Keith offers him no comfort but a confused and judgemental look, Hunk bravely presses on. 

It’s easier to navigate the store with his flashlight, and Keith is quiet as the two of them close up early. Keith locks the doors and flips off the dead open sign. He takes the nozzles off of the soda machine and soaks them in carbonated water that he sprays into a small food storage container that they keep in the fridge under the counter. Hunk turns off the long-thawed counter freezer and juggles each container and his phone as he carries them into the back. It takes a little less than thirty minutes to finish up, and while he contemplates if mopping tonight is even worth it, Keith runs a damp cleaning rag over each of the tables and chairs. 

“I guess this is probably a pretty disappointing way to spend your New Years, isn’t it?”

Keith’s voice breaking through the silence is so unexpected that Hunk jumps. He frets with the idea that he should probably be looking busier than he is right now—the muscle memory of staying on task while standing between these four familiar walls, but Keith isn’t acting as though he’s annoyed with him. And even his words now sound softer than they usually do, when Hunk manages to coax him into stiff and thorny conversations during any other shift.

Hunk clears his throat, fiddling with the buttons of the register as though they hadn’t already taken out the cash box and locked it up. As though, without power, there might be any way for them to cash out for the night. He runs his teeth over his bottom lip, allowing Keith’s words to swirl around in his thoughts for a long moment as he considers his response.

“It’s really not too bad,” he says, “My mom always used to say that spending the holidays in good company is the most important thing. And I think you’re pretty good company.”

Hunk can’t see Keith’s face clearly through the dark, and he’s elected to preserve his battery life in case of emergency by not abusing the flashlight feature on his phone. But he can’t help but notice the way that Keith’s shoulders seem to square, tenser than they were moments ago as he quickly jerks around to face his back in Hunk’s direction, rubbing his cleaning rag against the table in front of him so roughly that the legs jostle against the tile floor.

“I was going to let you go home early,” Keith says softly, and Hunk isn’t surprised. More often than not, when the evenings are slow like this, Keith eagerly shoos him away. He’s always assumed that Keith might just prefer the peace and quiet of working by himself, but now, he isn’t so sure, but he has no idea what other purpose sending him home would really serve. “I figured that you’d rather spend tonight with your friends or your girlfriend than… working here.”

Hunk can’t help but huff a laugh. It’s the first time that anyone aside from his distant aunts or young cousins have ever assumed that he has a girlfriend, and with them, at least, it’s often spoken with a ring of hope in place of Keith’s timid prodding. He can’t help but feel just a little bit embarrassed by it, thankful for the way that the darkness envelopes him and makes it difficult for Keith to discern the color now hot against his skin, even if he were to turn around again and look at him.

“Well, unfortunately, buddy, you’re stuck with me tonight. My friends are busy with their own parties, and my girlfriend is, well… I guess busy not being real.”

He laughs at his own lame joke, but Keith stays quiet. He perks up though, in the most curious display that Hunk has witnessed tonight. The tension in his shoulders melts away, and slowly, ever-so-gradually, he turns around to face him again. Neither of them speaks for a long moment, and Hunk can’t shake the feeling that he’s said something very wrong. He drums his fingers against the counter, leaning his weight onto his elbows that rest there. He flicks his gaze to the snow still pouring heavily outside, the feeble glow of the street lamp through the thick of it, the subtle dots of fingerprints against the window’s glass.

“W-well, I guess, uh…” He doesn’t know why he continues talking when his excessive nervous jabbering has never done him any favors before. But Keith watches him with piqued interest as he snags a hand under the collar of his shirt, pulling out the gaudy golden lion pendant and holding it out for him to catch sight of. “Someone gave me this. They put it in my cubby here, isn’t that weird? But, uh… everyone around here thinks that I have a secret admirer—”

He laughs once again, awkward and clipped with his words jumbled in his throat and his skin alight with heat.

“But I guess I wouldn’t mind, you know… spending tonight with someone who cared about me that much. I mean, for all I know, it probably wasn’t romantic and they were just trying to be nice or something, but… I guess it’s kind of neat to imagine that you have a secret admirer, right? Like… that someone likes you so much that they’d sneak a gift to you.”

He doesn’t know where he’s going with this or why he even brought it up. He shoves the pendant back under his shirt, feeling absolutely foolish for ever thinking that Keith would care about this, or that he’d find value in having this sort of personal conversation with a guy who he can barely stand working an entire shift with.

But Keith watches him for a little while longer. His stare is so piercing and hard that Hunk feels wholly trapped beneath it. He turns his own gaze back down to the counter, suddenly feeling entirely too pressured and overwhelmed by whatever thoughts Keith must be thinking about him now. 

And after a moment, he listens to the sound of Keith making his way from the table and pushing open the door to the counter. He slides past Hunk quietly, wordlessly, and without even asking for assistance in the form of Hunk’s flashlight, he slips into the back room.

Hunk doesn’t follow him, and he takes this opportunity alone to chastise himself for ruining a good moment with his own worthless conversation. If he’d kept things basic and impersonal, he knows that Keith would be far more likely to continue talking to him. He doesn’t know why he always has to ruin things by trying to be Keith’s friend. He isn’t sure why he can’t just accept that the guy isn’t going to like him back, no matter what he does, and instead of trying to force this, maybe just accepting this reality for what it is might make things feel so much easier between the two of them.

Hunk doesn’t have the heart to admit to himself fully that he doesn’t mind spending New Years with Keith because he likes him in a way that’s far less innocent than two co-workers covering a lot of similar shifts. He feels like a fraud for taking interest in him in a more romantic way—finding himself enamored with Keith’s handsome face and shapely body, the cute curve of his rare smiles and the saccharine, caramel-smooth of his quiet, bashful laughter. It’s hard not to be charmed by a guy like Keith, but it’s more than apparent that he doesn’t want the kind of attention that Hunk is always so eager to give him.

Hunk rests his forehead against the counter, puffing out a long, anguished breath and willing himself to pull his head out of his ass just long enough to salvage the charred remains of tonight. He’s two or three deep breaths in when he hears  Keith struggling through the darkness and pushing open the back room door once again. 

He jerks upright when he feels and hears something being placed just next to him on the counter. By the time that he turns his eyes back to Keith, he’s already passing through the counter door and making his way to one of the tables, pulling out the chair and sitting down before setting a pre-packaged sandwich and a bottle of water on the surface of it.

Hunk swallows dryly, turning his attention to whatever Keith left for him. It’s a twin sandwich and a bottle of soda—a brand that he recognizes as his favorite, one that he often buys for himself during excessively long shifts when the fountain drinks just don’t quite hit the spot. He tells himself with hot cheeks that it must just be a coincidence, and with another long breath, and a head already filled with rampant regrets, he grabs both and shoves himself through the counter door before making a quick line over to Keith’s table and settling across from him.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, “I guess we might as well make ourselves comfortable, right?”

Keith doesn’t look up or respond, but instead unwraps his dinner and begins to eat. They sit in silence, enjoying their meals as the snow continues to fall and the clock continues to tick by, drawing them closer and closer to another year spent working together in this same place, with the same awkward tension growing between them that Hunk isn’t sure if he’ll ever be tactful enough to abate. 

Keith finishes first, and Hunk is perplexed when he downs nearly half of his water bottle in just one, long swig. He doesn’t mention it, however, too afraid of making things weirder between them. Entirely too eager to right his past wrongs, and to allow Keith to take control of wherever he wants their relationship to go from here.

Keith’s water bottle is then sat between them, as Keith crosses his arms over the table. He looks blindly into the darkness of the store that surrounds them, seeming as though he isn’t so much seeing the black outlines of the tables and the silent coolers but looking through them into whatever might be occupying his thoughts. Hunk brushes off the crumbs that have fallen from the sandwich package onto his chest. He self-consciously wipes at the corners of his mouth, as well, eager not to distract Keith with any level of unkemptness when he’s finally found himself in such close contact with him.

But still, neither of them speak. Hunk fishes his phone from his pocket and checks the time.

11:35 PM. It’s getting maddeningly close. He can’t shake the feeling that something is going to happen at midnight, even though every reasonable part of him understands that it’s just the familiar feeling of the holiday getting the better of him.

Keith sighs, long and low, and he turns his eyes back to Hunk. It takes an immense amount of self-control not to twitch under the scrutiny of Keith’s gaze on him, but Hunk perseveres. He stays strong, even in the eyes of this beautiful boy, looking at him and not through him. Watching him in an expectant sort of way, as though he’s just waiting for him to open his mouth and make a fool of himself once again.

“Do you like it?” Keith says then, suddenly filling the silence that Hunk’s been so determined to place between them. “The… the lion necklace, I mean.”

Hunk almost doesn’t believe that the words have left Keith’s mouth, even as he watches him speak. He’s quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts and regaining his bearings before delving fully into the idea that, yes, Keith for whatever reason actually cares what he thinks about this random gift. And Keith is actually taking the opportunity to start a conversation with him about something instead of finding refuge far away from him in the back room. 

Hunk is only partially aware of the fact that maybe Keith is only talking to him now because there’s nothing else to do here. His phone is apparently dead, and it’s not like he can charge it while the power is out. And it’s too dark in here to clean or to wander much further than the dining room, where the dim light of the street lamps glows softly through the snow-framed windows and pools in blue hues on the floor, fading as it rises over the tiles onto the tables and counters around them. He’s stuck here, in this room, as the only room where he can even see his hands in front of his face. And he’s stuck here with Hunk, so maybe he’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation by passing the time with what he deems to be “not completely agonizing” conversation. 

He knows that maybe Keith is only hoping to pass the time now, or placate him so tonight won’t be more miserable than it absolutely has to be. Maybe Keith reasons that if he gets the talking out of the way now, he won’t have to deal with Hunk blabbering to him when they figure out their sleeping situation, if it even takes that long for the power to come back on, and…

Well, Hunk isn’t quite sure. Even with working electricity, he doesn’t know how long it will take for anyone to realize that they’re stuck here, and to begin the inevitably time-consuming rescue so they can finally return home. He checks his phone again, quickly and discreetly under the table. 11:39. The new year is drawing nearer, and Hunk swallows thickly. He doesn’t know why he feels as though something could possibly happen here tonight. He doesn’t understand why his nerves suddenly feel alight with an energy that he rarely feels within the walls of this coffee shop.

But finally, he admits to himself that he’s wasted enough time. When he draws his eyes back to Keith, he finds that he’s wringing his hands on the table, his own gaze trained to his fingers lacing between each other, to the glossy surface beneath them.

“Yeah, I really like it,” Hunk says then, quiet and somewhat uncertain, but overwhelmed with the sensation that every word that he speaks now is of the utmost importance. “I mean… it reminds me of this joke that I made once—”

“—About being a sleeping lion.”

Keith is looking at him now, his dark eyes hard and trained on every twitch of Hunk’s surprised expression. His voice is so strong and unwavering that the oxygen is abruptly knocked from Hunk’s lungs, and for a moment, he flounders here, unsure of what else there is to say.

“U-uh, yeah, that.” he laughs. “I’m surprised that you remembered that, but, uh… it’s not only that, I mean… it’s special, right? Like, when someone remembers you, when they take the time to think about you… it means a lot to be remembered by people. Like, to realize that you mean enough to them that they think of you even when they don’t have to.”

And he knows that this is the true reason why he’s taken to wearing the pendant under his shirt. It’s an ugly thing that his mom had clicked her tongue at. It’s embarrassing enough that Lance only has to move his gaze as though looking at it against Hunk’s chest to rile him up. But he knows that they can’t get it, that no one can really understand it. It evokes a feeling in him, warmth and comfort wrapped in the mystery that still surrounds it. Someone somewhere thought about it. Someone out there took a moment out of their day to put together a gift for him just to show him that he meant something. He occupied their thoughts and he matters to them.

And he doesn’t know if he can explain that to Keith in so many words without getting choked up. He doesn’t know if Keith could understand the meaning of it, when he’s so distant from other people. But before he can backtrack or apologize, or even attempt to convey these feelings in laymen’s terms that might make him sound like less of a sorry sap than he actually is, Keith interjects. 

“That’s how you are to me.”

Keith’s words are so unexpected and so confusing, at first, that Hunk can’t stop his jaw from going slack, and his still-damp eyes from widening, and his fingers from crinkling loud and tight against the surface of his soda bottle. He feels heat spring to his cheeks once again, and he finds himself breaking his steady eye contact with Keith only to bounce his gaze from the dark encasing of the snowfall outside, to the tile floor, to his phone untucked from his pocket once again, if only to give himself something to look at that isn’t going to cause some level of cardiac arrest. Keith pushes out a sharp breath, and Hunk can hear his chair creaking as he adjusts his position. His voice is firmer and less patient now, and his words are jilted in a way that feels more embarrassed to Hunk than angry or intimidating. 

“I just mean—” Keith clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable. Hunk bites his lip, willing himself to be strong enough to meet his eyes again, but when he looks back, Keith is making a firm point of glaring off in the other direction. His cheeks are so flushed that Hunk can even make out the stark color against them in the dark. “You’re… always trying to include me in things, and… you invite me places and ask me questions about myself even though I’m not…  _ good _ at talking to people. I just… I thought—”

He slams up from the table, the force of it so hard that his chair nearly topples down behind him. The table between them scrapes against the tile, clacks against the empty chairs, loud and echoey in the silent hollow of the dining room absent of its usual buzzing and soft, atmospheric music. 

Keith’s face grows only redder and his brows jerk down low, shoved close together and twitching with a new wave of emotion that floods and crashes in his wild expression. His eyes look feral with blown out pupils. He’s breathing so hard that Hunk can clearly see that firm, temptingly chiseled chest straining against the buttons of his shirt under his apron.

“I know you don’t like me like I like you, I—I mean, you can’t. And that’s fine, but I—I just… I wanted you to know that I think about you too and—and I know the necklace is stupid and kind of ugly, but it was the only lion one that I could find and, I…”

Keith’s chair is shoved back under the table. His water bottle has toppled over in all of the fuss and clamoring. Hunk watches with wide eyes as Keith jerks away, as he makes a blind but purposeful journey towards the counter, shoving through the door so hard that it slaps against the counter with a resonant bang. He’s moving in a jerky, clumsy sort of way, and his words surge hot through Hunk’s thoughts. Hunk has only seen him this agitated fleetingly, and those instances have dwindled to nearly nothing as time has gone on and he’s grown more acclimated to the general atmosphere of this workplace. Once upon a time, Hunk might have been more familiar with seeing Keith this strung out and upset, when Lance would tease him and he’d sometimes get so fed up with it that he’d lash out brazenly. But it’s surprising seeing it now, accompanying such a shocking confession, and finding himself on the receiving end of this Keith-brand-patented-rage that somehow makes him seem more adorably flustered than he might have, had he kept a cool head.

Behind the counter, with a hand on the back room door, in a quieter voice, but no less ebbed with roiling emotion, Keith tells Hunk, “I know it’s stupid, and… I know you were hoping that someone better got it for you, so… Sorry, but… thanks. For everything.”

And with that, he shoves into the back room. The door swings once, then twice back and forth before slowing and stalling and falling silent once again.

It’s 11:45 by the time that Hunk collects himself enough to check his phone. He doesn’t entirely understand why he’s trembling so hard, has barely had the opportunity to grapple with his own unexplored feelings for Keith before he’s found himself on the receiving end of a confession that sounded more like a reprimand than anything tender or romantic that he might have hoped for in his wildest dreams. But he finds himself watching his mobile clock flip from 11:45 to 11:46, then 47, and onward until the new year is only five minutes away. He finds himself thinking about the package, and that card, and how careful the penmanship had been, as though to keep Keith’s identity totally secret, but… then he wonders, remembering Keith’s chicken scratch on the sides of to-go mugs, if maybe he wasn’t trying that hard to hide it. If maybe, instead, he just wanted it to look nice, wanted Hunk to know that he cared and he was trying, even if he had a hard time admitting the way that he felt out loud, even on his best days.

His fingers find the edges of the chain around his neck. They slide over the indentations of the gemstones and the embossed patterns in the fake gold. He can imagine Keith skimming the shelves of department stores in search of something like this, suffering through the holiday crowds and even going as far as to swallow his trepidation and dislike of conversation just to ask a few jewelry clerks if they might have exactly what he was looking for. He can see Keith in his mind’s eye: scouring and searching and inevitably settling on something that just wasn’t good enough, but knowing that he was running out of time.

The onset of emotions in his chest crashes through him like waves. He feels tears dotting the corners of his eyes. He feels his throat close as the profound weight of this entire situation settles heavily upon him.

And it’s 11:58 when he finally shoves up from his seat.

The seconds tick by as he shoves his way through the darkness clumsily, but with an important, all-encompassing goal in mind that dulls even the ache of his shin hitting the counter door in the very worst way.

It’s 11:59 when he stumbles into the back room, when he shines his flashlight through the darkness and finds Keith scrambling over by the cubbies, seemingly in search of his long-dead phone.

The seconds are centuries as he draws nearer, as Keith pushes up from his crouched spot on the floor and faces him without looking in his eyes. And his hand feels good on Keith’s firm shoulder in just the way that he’s always thought that it would. The warmth of Keith radiates in the empty space between them, and his skin is soft, his eyes are dark, his cheeks are hot as Hunk finds action in place of the words that so often fail him.

It’s midnight when their lips meet, by chance, in a sole act of universal serendipity that Hunk wouldn’t even believe himself if the alarm on his phone didn’t chirp the moment that the clock struck. It’s dark and getting colder, and the snow won’t stop falling for hours and hours into the early morning. The lights won’t turn back on until they’ve both nearly fallen asleep.

But this moment is perfect. It’s soft and quiet, gentle and serene in ways that Hunk never knew that life could actually be. Keith laughs in a nervous, breathy way when they pull apart, and he doesn’t knock Hunk’s hands from his shoulders or make a move to separate them.

It’s a new year, at the same job, with the one person who Hunk has failed to connect with time and time again. Keith leans up to steal another short kiss, and suddenly, everything clicks into place just right.

And Hunk knows that the new year has to be a perfect one, if it’s already started like this.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Merry (late) Christmas to [starboyshiro](https://starboyshiro.tumblr.com)! I'm sorry that it ended up coming after Christmas, but your ideas were very, very adorable and I hope that I did them justice! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! 
> 
> [tumblr](http://curionabang.tumblr.com), [twitter](https://twitter.com/mothisland), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/flyingisland)


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